Further Explorations (Concord Jazz)
Chick Corea, Eddie Gómez & Paul Motian
Released January 17, 2012
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2013
YouTube:
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Spotify:
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About:
Rather than approach Bill Evans’ music as a tribute, his material provides more of a template. Corea, Gomez and Motian each also contribute original material.
They also take on a never-before-heard, recently unearthed Evans tune, the graceful, gorgeous “Song No. 1.”
The results are inspired, as this elevated piano trio plays with near-telepathic empathy and a remarkable blend of ingenuity and emotional depth.
Track Listing:
Disc 1
1. Peri’s Scope (Bill Evans) 5:24
2. Gloria’s Step (Scott LaFaro) 6:16
3. They Say That Falling in Love Is Wonderful (Irving Berlin) 7:18
4. Alice in Wonderland (Sammy Fain / Bob Hilliard) 8:16
(Chick Corea, Grammy Nominee for Best Improvised Jazz Solo 2013)
5. Song No. 1 (Bill Evans) 6:13
6. Diane (Lew Pollack / Erno Rapee) 6:20
7. Off the Cuff (Chick Corea / Eddie Gomez / Paul Motian) 5:44
8. Laurie (Bill Evans) 8:56
9. Bill Evans (Chick Corea) 8:40
10. Little Rootie Tootie (Thelonious Monk) 10:24
Disc 2
1. Hot House (Tadd Dameron) 5:30
2. Mode VI (Paul Motian) 8:13
3. Another Tango (Chick Corea) 6:51
4. Turn Out the Stars (Bill Evans) 9:18
5. Rhapsody (Chick Corea) 8:12
6. Very Early (Bill Evans) 7:01
7. But Beautiful, Pt. 1 (Johnny Burke / James Van Heusen) 3:41
8. But Beautiful, Pt. 2 (Johnny Burke / James Van Heusen) 9:12
9. Puccini’s Walk (Eddie Gomez) 5:23
Personnel:
Chick Corea: piano
Eddie Gomez: bass
Paul Motian: drums
Recorded live February 4 – 17, 2010, at Blue Note Jazz Club, New York
Review:
Three still-living jazz icons team up on Further
Explorations, an album inspired by another legend whose influence remains
unequivocal, 30 years after passing away, age 51, in 1980. Gaining initial
exposure as a member of Bill Evans’ first trio on New Jazz
Conceptions (Riverside, 1956), drummer Paul Motian left the
group nearly four years before bassist Eddie Gomez would commence an
eleven-year run with the pianist on At the Montreux Jazz
Festival (Verve, 1968).Though the connection is less direct, Evans was an
early influence on perennial student Chick Corea, in particular on early
recordings like the younger pianist’s now-classic Now He Sings, Now He
Sobs (Solid State, 1968); the two also sharing a common interest in
classical music and bosses—trumpeter Miles Davis and
saxophonist Stan Getz – albeit years apart.
With Corea, Gomez and Motian far too advanced as distinctive voices and
personal stylists to do anything quite so overt as a tribute
record, Further Explorations is better-described as a tabula
rasa, built on a repertoire largely associated with Evans, along with a few
well-chosen originals. That he actually presented the lead sheet for his gently
balladic “Bill Evans” to Evans, at the Top of the Gate in
the 1970s, only speaks to Corea’s endless appreciation of a pianist who was, in
fact, gracious enough to let him sit in with his trio around that time.
Historical tidbits aside, Further
Explorations lives up to its title by taking Evans’ repertoire to realms
unattainable by the sadly departed pianist. It reflects Motian’s equally
influential evolution, his sense of time so fluid yet, when necessary, so
absolutely unshakable that rather than anchoring a piano trio
he liberates it. On his own often-recorded “Mode VI,” he
provides the requisite color and periodic temporal suggestions, freeing the
often-percussive Corea to play with an uncharacteristically muted touch, and
giving Gomez the opportunity to provide some of the set’s most hauntingly
beautiful moments, his sinewy yet plaint pizzicato balanced with a
breathtakingly delicate arco.
The captured patter before Evans’ set-opening “Peri’s Scope,” on this
live set, suggests these players choose what to play with the same
spontaneity as how to play; light on arrangements, just effortless envelope-pushing,
as Motian swings with uncharacteristic fire and Gomez walks energetically
through Corea’s solo, before breaking down into a series of trade-offs where
everyone somehow manages to remain with their feet in the pool.
Evans covered Thelonious Monk during his lifetime, but never with the
kind of freedom—or, perhaps, with a different kind of freedom—and
mischievous idiosyncrasy with which this trio imbues “Little Rootie
Tootie,” nor did he travel such abstract roads as Corea’s
“Rhapsody,” which trades on both the longstanding relationship shared
by the composer and Gomez, dating back to The Leprechaun (Polydor,
1976), and that special sound of surprise that can happen—and, in
this case, did happen—with a first encounter, as the two-week run at New
York’s Blue Note, from which these two discs were culled, represented for
Corea, Gomez and Motian.
Now 80, Motian seems busier than ever, while Corea, ten years his younger,
appears hell-bent on covering even more stylistic territory than he did during
his 1970s heyday, when he ran the gamut from the freewheeling Circle group
of Paris Concert (ECM, 1971) and chamber jazz of Crystal
Silence (ECM, 1973), to pedal-to-the-metal jazz-rock of Return to
Forever’s Romantic Warrior (Columbia, 1976) and gentle, Latin-esque
musings of Friends (Polydor, 1978). Still, none of the pianist’s
projects, since the turn of the millennium, have combined the kind of
effortlessness freedom and virtuosity—born of decades on the bandstand—with the
unfettered energy and relentless joy of discovery normally associated with
players far, far younger.
If anything, the superb Further Explorations suggests that the best
years may still be ahead of Corea, Gomez and Motian, and the only
thing that could possibly be wrong with this Japan-only release is if it
fails—like the Five Trios (Universal Japan, 2007) box and Super
Trio (Universal Japan, 2005) before it—to be issued to the rest of the
world.
John Kelman (All About Jazz)
